Ever since I arrived, I could never really wrap my head around the idea that everything I was experiencing was real. I didn't deny that I was seeing what I saw or that I could feel what I felt. But in my head, I always divided things between the real world and Carousel. As I stared at the map, I started to realize how complicated that division might actually be.

No one who stayed here for very long thought that Carousel was actually a place located along some narrow forested street in the middle of the United States. It became very clear that whatever carousel was it was separate from a world that we had known.

But how separate? And exactly how was Carousel luring people from our world to its doorstep. At what point did our world end and Carousel begin?

I stepped away from my map. I needed to take a break.

I saw through the large glass window that there were people outside still and I decided to go ask a series of questions that most of us here had asked at least a dozen times in some form or another.

“Where is Carousel?” I asked as I walked outside onto the deck where Antoine, Kimberly, and a collection of veterans were sitting.

These were not veterans that I spent a lot of time talking to. Truthfully there were so many people at Dyers Lodge that it was hard for me to keep track of them all. Even though I didn't know who they were they did have some idea who I was.

“Depends on what you mean by that,” Garrett said. He was still recovering from the wounds he received on his way back to the Lodge after escaping the black snow. “If you mean where did we enter it, you should already know that. If you mean where does Carousel say it is, that is harder to answer.”

“I’m talking about within the lore of Carousel, Is there an actual location where it is located, or is it really different in every storyline?”

This elicited groans. I was asking questions that no one knew the answer to but still, I needed to confirm my understanding one last time.

“Now you’re getting into the weeds,” another one of the veterans whom I did not know very well said. “It could be anywhere. I saw a map where it was in Massachusetts and another in southeast New Mexico with some aliens. It can’t decide. If I remember right, this very camp is in New Jersey, or at least that’s what the map in the administration office says.”

“This place is built like the backlots of a movie studio,” Garret said. “You need a desert? Go south. You need forest? Go west. Town Square looks like it comes from some well-to-do town in Connecticut. Yet the town has a financial district with skyscrapers that you can’t find unless you know the directions. Carousel is everywhere.”

He echoed much the same sentiment that Chris had earlier. Carousel was just playing a role like we were. There was a setting here for everything. And if there wasn't, you could buy a train ticket or a plane ride to find a place that fits your fancy.

“I saw a trailer for a storyline with a Japanese shrine,” I said. “And I know that The Astralist is set in a German castle.”

“The Astralist’s castle was brought to America though,” Antoine said. “The lady told us that first thing.”

I shook my head. I had thought that too originally.

“No, she said it was brought ‘here’,” I said. “I rewatched it. She never said it was brought to America. We just assumed.”

“The more you know,” Garrett said. He and the other veterans soon returned to their own conversation.

I looked over to Antoine and Kimberly. I needed to talk to them. They caught my gaze as I walked back inside.

“What’s going on?” Antoine asked once we were in the common room away from the others.

“Do you know where Dina is? I found something.”

“Found something?” Antoine asked.

“She was out by the docks,” Kimberly said. “I’ll go get her.”

After a few minutes, the two of them returned ready to hear what it was I had discovered.

I had gone through all of the possibilities, but the one that rose to the top was simple.

“I have a theory,” I said. “I think it's something we need to test. Why does Carousel have a German castle and an American university? Why does it have maps that put Carousel all over the globe and sometimes on different globes altogether? I mean, we’ve been talking about this forever.”

And I did mean forever. Many people took this evidence to indicate that Carousel was some form of afterlife. Others assumed that it was some kind of Lovecraftian deity looking for entertainment that had built this town as a torture chamber.

I paused for a moment to think.

“Do you remember that speech that the red herring character, Evan, in the Ranger Danger storyline gave right before he accused me of being the killer? I’ve watched it a dozen times now. He said something about how people can be stopped from moving forward and their growth can be taken from them. I thought it was such an odd thing to talk about in the context of that story, that your dead friend won’t ever grow out of being a jerk frat guy. I mean, Ruck was a jerk when the script said he was, but still, an odd thing to say. Now I don’t think Evan was talking about Ruck. I think he was talking about himself, that he would never be able to move forward or grow. He was mourning for himself, but he had to stay in character.”

I paced back and forth as I spoke.

“They’ve been talking to us this whole time,” I said. I pulled Mrs. Cloudburst's letter out of my pocket. “But they all have to stay in character.”

I opened the letter. “I noticed that if you only read every other line of the main body of this letter, it stops being a soppy love letter:

I was trapped in a prison before he came along. I had no idea that when I signed up for the Society, I would eventually be trading one prison for another.

I regret the things I have done to people, but how can I change when I can never leave this cycle? The secret we all know is that only change can save us, but it is difficult; I've tried to save myself in every way I knew how.

Please, please, save us.

When I meet someone like you, I remember the pain, the torment, given and taken, and I remember my desire to leave this all behind. I no longer know if I deserve punishment for my sins, but the innocent and the deserving suffer together in this life, don't they?

The storm came before I expected it, but it was all part of the greater plan, I think. What is next may be worse, but it's all part of that same plan.

You must succeed, all the good people like you, must succeed in your fight against people like me. It's time we get back on our true paths; I hope you're ready.

There were so many ways to read that letter. Some parts were clear, like her cry for help and her warning of things to come. Did she volunteer to play a role in Carousel and now regret it? Or was Mrs. Cloudburst a former player who was now stuck playing a minor villain? How would that work? Was the player the NPC being controlled or the hundred-year-old sorcerer in the cask downstairs?

Or was it possible that she wasn’t playing a character at all?

“The demon at the bar talked like it was trapped here before it got its head blown off. Cristobal and Mrs. Cloudburst talked like they were here as punishment for their sins, but both said that they weren’t the only ones. Cloudburst said that ‘innocents’ suffered with them.”

“So, you think the NPCs are real people forced to play characters?” Kimberly asked. “We’ve talked about that before.”

“No, not most of them,” I said. “I think they’re playing themselves. I think they are reenacting events that happened to them in their real lives back where they’re really from. I think that somewhere in a parallel reality, there really was a society of rich folks that body snatched people. I think Carousel brought it here. The sorcerers and the victims, brought here to relive the cycle over and over again. I’ve been thinking about that for a while, but it wasn’t until I got this last piece of evidence that it all came together.”

I showed them to the map on the desk and pointed at the bed and breakfast near where we entered Carousel, where the bleeding woman begged for our help.

Olde Hill Bed and Breakfast

The Jewel of Carousel

They stared at it for a moment.

“So?” Dina asked. “What does it mean?”

“When we were on our way to Carousel, we stopped to look at the map because we thought we had made a wrong turn. We didn’t see any signs for Carousel, after all. Camden snapped a picture of a sign advertising a bed and breakfast—just some little hick hotel, we didn’t think anything of it. The sign was really old. It had an arrow pointing down the road toward where the hotel would be. A lot of letters were missing, but someone wrote the words, ‘closed fur renovations’’ on it. A typo that was kind of funny, I guess. That picture was the last message on the group chat. We lost signal after that.”

I showed them the picture Camden had sent us. Even with all of the missing letters on the sign itself, we could tell what it said:

Olde Hill Bed and Breakfast

The Jewel of the Ozarks

“As in the Ozark Mountains,” I said.

The Ozark Mountains. Carousel lured its victims in many ways, but there was one constant: We were all told to go to a town called Carousel. The directions we were given always led us to a small road in the center of the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri in the middle of the United States. Every player had a similar story.

“Jewel of Carousel, Jewel of the Ozarks,” I said. “I sifted through the possibilities and there was only one that made sense to me. I think I know what’s going on, or at least part of it,” I said. “I think there was a real place called the Olde Hill Bed and Breakfast. A business that existed in the real world, our world. Their slogan was ‘The Jewel of the Ozarks’. I think something terrible happened there in 1989 and because of that, Carousel absorbed it or something, the victims, the killers, the entire hotel. But when it got here, it was given a new version of the slogan that fit its new location. ‘The Jewel of Carousel’ instead of ‘the Ozarks’. Everything that’s brought here is rebranded as being part of Carousel.”

I took three of the tickets I had received that had a hidden message on them.

“That’s the Glitch in the Matrix from the tropes I was given after the Grotesque storyline. Our Friends in High Places want us to know about this hotel. A Glitch in the Matrix, Accidentally Captured on Film by Camden, Back to Where It All Started. I think our Friends saw that he had taken that picture and designed the clues around it. I didn’t realize it until I saw its slogan on the map here.”

I really hoped I didn't sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist. I wasn't sure if I should tell them that the radio had played the commercial for the casino when I discovered the Glitch. Would that make me sound more or less credible?

“Back to where it all started?” Kimberly asked.

“People from our world being brought to Carousel. The parking lot didn’t exist until the hotel was brought here in 1989. I think that’s how Carousel got access to us: through the storyline it took from our world.”

Dina still wasn’t sure. “So, you’re going all in on Carousel being a completely different world from ours?”

Antoine had an answer for that. “If Carousel is an actual place in the United States it would be less than forty miles from Branson, Missouri based on the directions we were given. Before we got here, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Now that I’ve gotten a look at it, it’s way too big to stay hidden that close to a popular tourist town like Branson. Of course, Carousel could just stay hidden with magic, but I still don’t think it fits. The only problem is,” he started, “Players have done that storyline before, at the bed and breakfast. If it’s so special, why didn’t they find something?”

“I don’t pretend to know,” I said. “I just think this is where we are supposed to go. Maybe I’m completely wrong. Or maybe we find evidence that can help us escape.”

There was a pause for a moment.

“What’s the storyline there called again?” Antione asked.

“Permanent Vacancy,” I answered. “And I think we can beat it.”